Romance StudiesPub Date : 2019-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02639904.2019.1690787
S. Hartwig
{"title":"09/10, Or, How Do Texts Work?","authors":"S. Hartwig","doi":"10.1080/02639904.2019.1690787","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02639904.2019.1690787","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper proposes to describe the reception of literary texts with the help of attractors, a concept developed in chaos theory. The main thesis is that attractors can describe literary texts — especially highly fragmented and open contemporary texts — in a more differentiated way than reception theory does. With the concept of attractors, phenomena come into focus that only resonate on the margins of other models of reception. An analysis of the famous Latin American novel Los detectives salvajes written by Roberto Bolaño shows how incongruous, possible, unsettled and alleged meanings work together and create an impression of dispersion and convergence of meaning in the text. This can clearly be shown by an analysis organized around attractors.","PeriodicalId":41864,"journal":{"name":"Romance Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"119 - 133"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02639904.2019.1690787","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42159874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romance StudiesPub Date : 2019-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02639904.2019.1690789
Pablo Lombó Mulliert
{"title":"Octavio, sus sonetos. Notas sobre las variantes de Libertad bajo palabra","authors":"Pablo Lombó Mulliert","doi":"10.1080/02639904.2019.1690789","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02639904.2019.1690789","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In these notes on the Octavio Paz Libertad bajo palabra variants, the author outlines a brief classification of them, with the purpose of contributing to an edition that includes all the modifications that the author himself made to his poems over the course of 47 years and 7 different editions. In order to understand the complexity of the different types of variants, this article proposes to describe the (general and particular) changes undergone by the 14 sonnets included in the volume and a critical essay with a comprehensive variants section. En estas notas sobre las variantes de Libertad bajo palabra de Octavio Paz se esboza una clasificación de las mismas, con miras a la edición crítica que incluya todas las modificaciones que el mismo autor fue aportando a sus poemas a lo largo de 47 años en siete ediciones diferentes. Para comprender la complejidad de los diferentes tipos de variantes, se proponen la descripción de los cambios (generales y particulares) que sufrieron los 14 sonetos incluidos en el volumen y un ensayo de edición crítica de los mismos con un aparato de variantes exhaustivo.","PeriodicalId":41864,"journal":{"name":"Romance Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"149 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02639904.2019.1690789","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41411093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romance StudiesPub Date : 2019-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02639904.2019.1690788
Abdelkader Cheref
{"title":"‘Cultural Memory and Resistance in Assia Djebar’s Vaste est la prison’","authors":"Abdelkader Cheref","doi":"10.1080/02639904.2019.1690788","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02639904.2019.1690788","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the concept of cultural memory and Resistance in Vaste est la prison by the Francophone and postcolonial Maghrebi author Assia Djebar. It also attempts to highlight the link(s) between memory and literature; and how literature engages in individual and collective memory when considering that resistance is determined by the practices of remembering and of writing. The article draws attention to the processes by which Djebar challenges and reconstructs cultural memory as a form of communal meaning in modern Algeria. Djebar embraces the Gramscian model which brings together ‘theoretical ingenuity and local knowledge’ while highlighting culture in the nationalist struggle for emancipation. Engaging with the works of revolutionary theoreticians such as Amilcar Cabral and Frantz Fanon, who both recognize the significance of the past in colonial and anti-colonial processes, Djebar revisits official/traditional history in the novel. She also uses a postcolonial approach that successfully de-centres the official version of history and makes space for the contribution of ‘the freed and silenced’. In underlining the dialectical relationship between the novel and history, Djebar not only acknowledges Pierre Nora’s pioneering work in linking memory to tangible concrete sites, identified as lieux de mémoire, but she also takes this a step further. She brings in, first, the vital importance of language (Tamazight) as the incarnation of the community’s collective memory, and, second, the interconnectedness of identity, cultural memory, colonial legacies, and postcolonial studies.","PeriodicalId":41864,"journal":{"name":"Romance Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"134 - 148"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02639904.2019.1690788","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45087298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romance StudiesPub Date : 2019-04-03DOI: 10.1080/02639904.2019.1656417
S. Henighan
{"title":"Cold War Chronology in Vargas Llosa’s Travesuras de la niña mala","authors":"S. Henighan","doi":"10.1080/02639904.2019.1656417","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02639904.2019.1656417","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This romantic novel has been studied primarily in terms of the portrait of its female protagonist. Unmentioned by prior scholarly studies is the fact that throughout the novel, Vargas Llosa discreetly yet consistently dates plot developments, allowing the reader to deduce that the female protagonist dies in July 1989, the date of the author’s final experience of Europe during the Cold War. Drawing on this structure, the present article argues that the post-1989 historical events and social trends that appear in the text are not authorial chronological errors, but rather represent a deliberate effort on Vargas Llosa’s part to subsume the post-1989 world into the ethos of the Cold War years, when, as he argues in La civilización del espectáculo (2012), an essay collection written in part concurrently with Travesuras de la niña mala, books and ideas mattered more than is the case in the 1990s or the twenty-first century. In order to achieve this absorption of the post-Cold-War world by the pre-1989 period, this article maintains, Vargas Llosa depoliticizes the Cold War years, portraying them not in terms of East-West ideological struggle, but rather as an era of the flourishing of literary culture centred in Paris.","PeriodicalId":41864,"journal":{"name":"Romance Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"84 - 94"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02639904.2019.1656417","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44761744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romance StudiesPub Date : 2019-04-03DOI: 10.1080/02639904.2019.1656418
Xosé Pereira-Boán
{"title":"De la picaresca a la parresia: desplazamientos éticos en ¡Ay Carmela!","authors":"Xosé Pereira-Boán","doi":"10.1080/02639904.2019.1656418","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02639904.2019.1656418","url":null,"abstract":"RESUMEN ¡Ay Carmela! supuso en 1990 un hito tanto para la historia del cine español por su éxito tanto en crítica como en taquilla, así como por su deliberada articulación pionera de la memoria desde la arena cultural. Este trabajo analiza los desplazamientos éticos sobre los que se vehicula el filme desde su coyuntura inicial, deudora de la picaresca hasta llegar a la tradición clásica de la parresia que recupera Michel Foucault. Las argucias picarescas para sobrevivir se muestran o bien fisiológicamente satisfactorias o artísticamente inexistentes en la figura de Paulino, en su lucha por sobrevivir en los mejores términos posibles, dada la confluencia entre la esfera artística y la estructura dominante que se cataliza en tiempos de excepción. Abandonar ese espacio conlleva un riesgo que expone al artista. En el caso de Carmela, al denunciar la injusticia desde esa posición, se vuelve vulnerable, susceptible de ser eliminada, cuando el poder al que se dirige se revela tirano y rechaza violentamente el hablar franco de la parresia.","PeriodicalId":41864,"journal":{"name":"Romance Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"105 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02639904.2019.1656418","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42946160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romance StudiesPub Date : 2019-04-03DOI: 10.1080/02639904.2019.1656419
Shoshana-Rose Marzel
{"title":"Molière’s Le Tartuffe Ou l’imposteur as Another Fictionalization of the Book of Esther","authors":"Shoshana-Rose Marzel","doi":"10.1080/02639904.2019.1656419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02639904.2019.1656419","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article argues that Molière’s Le Tartuffe ou l’imposteur has much in common with the biblical Book of Esther. Adopting the mythocritique theoretical perspective, the paper first demonstrates that both narratives unfold through a similar story featuring the psychological domination of a villain over a powerful man; the concoction of a secret plot by the villain; its discovery through a counter-plot; and its thwarting. In both cases, the traitors and their plots are discovered in a similar scene in which both deceived patrons see their former confidant lusting after their wives. Only then do they realize the extent of the villain’s plot: the villain’s desire to have sex with their wives symbolizes his willingness to usurp their patron’s position and assets. This paper also presents an analogy between the characters: Ahassuerus corresponds to Orgon, Haman to Tartuffe, Esther refers to Elmire, and Mordechai to Cléante. Finally, the paper shows that this parallel emphasizes the political dimension of the play and explains its Deus ex machina and its relevance to the historical context.","PeriodicalId":41864,"journal":{"name":"Romance Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"69 - 83"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02639904.2019.1656419","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46440484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romance StudiesPub Date : 2019-04-03DOI: 10.1080/02639904.2019.1656420
Scott Shinabargar
{"title":"Impotence and Imperative in Michaux’s La Nuit Remue","authors":"Scott Shinabargar","doi":"10.1080/02639904.2019.1656420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02639904.2019.1656420","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study explores a key stage in Michaux’s poetry, in La Nuit remue. Agreeing with critical consensus, that this is his first major work, I nonetheless question the potency of certain texts in their effect upon the reader. If Michaux finds pleasure in the demiurgic power of writing — engendering the strange creatures that take form in language (highlighted through textual analysis at the phonetic level) — there is an equal tendency to sabotage the creative act. The blasé negativism infusing much of this work would not be problematic, were it not for the mission articulated by the poet himself: the creation of a therapeutic reading experience, lifting up those who are similarly overwhelmed by existence. Through a final series of readings, I propose that Michaux is most effective when significantly invested in the text—not coolly detached, but undergoing — and reacting against — the malevolent forces unleashed in the space of the poem.","PeriodicalId":41864,"journal":{"name":"Romance Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"106 - 117"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02639904.2019.1656420","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43343562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romance StudiesPub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02639904.2019.1599566
Gerard Cheshire
{"title":"The Language and Writing System of MS408 (Voynich) Explained","authors":"Gerard Cheshire","doi":"10.1080/02639904.2019.1599566","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02639904.2019.1599566","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Manuscript MS408 (Voynich) is unusual in a number of respects: 1. It uses an extinct language. 2. Its alphabet uses a number of unfamiliar symbols alongside more familiar symbols. 3. It includes no dedicated punctuation marks. 4. Some of the letters have symbol variants to indicate punctuation. 5. Some of the symbol variants indicate phonetic accents. 6. All of the letters are in lower case. 7. There are no double consonants. 8. It includes diphthong, triphthongs, quadriphthongs and even quintiphthongs for the abbreviation of phonetic components. 9. It includes some words and abbreviations in Latin. As a result, identifying the language and solving the writing system required some ingenuity and lateral thinking, but both were duly revealed. The writing system is rather more singular and less intuitive than modern systems, which may explain why it failed to become culturally ubiquitous and ultimately became obsolete. On the other hand, a significant vestige of the language has survived into the modern era, because its lexicon has been sequestered into the many modern languages of Mediterranean Europe. Here, the language and writing system are explained, so that other scholars can explore the manuscript for its linguistic and informative content.","PeriodicalId":41864,"journal":{"name":"Romance Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"30 - 67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02639904.2019.1599566","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47653169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romance StudiesPub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02639904.2019.1599565
Stefan Halikowski Smith
{"title":"Primor E Honra Da Vida Soldadesca No Estado Da India: An Anonymous Late Sixteenth-Century Manual of Soldiery and Political Affirmation of the Military Frontier in India","authors":"Stefan Halikowski Smith","doi":"10.1080/02639904.2019.1599565","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02639904.2019.1599565","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The anonymous, and undated Primor e honra da vida soldadesca no Estado da India or Excellence and honour of the soldier’s life, a lengthy and powerfully argued tract seeking to uphold military standards in the Portuguese Orient, holds many mysteries: although published in 1630, we do not know when it was written, or by whom. The text has been republished, most recently by Laura Monteiro Pereira in 2003, who argues that the text was written during one of the two administrations of D. Luís de Ataíde tends and tends towards religious rather than classical authority. In this analysis, the varied sources drawn on by the anonymous author are systematically categorised, the work is dated more precisely to 1578–80, some effort is made to adequately contextualise the text, and the impact of the text — one written very much for the future — assessed on subsequent Portuguese policy towards the Orient.","PeriodicalId":41864,"journal":{"name":"Romance Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"12 - 29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02639904.2019.1599565","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59310664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romance StudiesPub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02639904.2019.1599564
I. Rodríguez Cachón
{"title":"Nuevas y viejas reflexiones literarias en el ‘Discurso sobre la Poesía Castellana’ (1575) de Gonzalo Argote de Molina","authors":"I. Rodríguez Cachón","doi":"10.1080/02639904.2019.1599564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02639904.2019.1599564","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In 1575, Gonzalo Argote de Molina published in Seville an edition of El conde Lucanor in which he includes as a colophon an interesting reflection on contemporary Castilian poetics, entitled ‘Discurso sobre la Poesía Castellana’. This short poetic treatise acquires a certain value by virtue of its publication precisely at the stage of Spanish poetics when the clash between the new Petrarchan literary trends and the old Castilian tradition was turning in favour of the Italians. A large part of this dispute between ‘castellanizantes’ and ‘italianizantes’ materialized in the use of metrics. In this duel, Argote de Molina still opts decisively for the traditional Castilian mode, although it was already more than three decades since the publication of works by Garcilaso de la Vega or Juan Boscán, which can be seen as leading examples of the new trends. The appearance of this discourse helps us to confirm the continuing attachment in Spain to the ‘vulgar cuenta’ as opposed to the ‘Italian way’. This work tries to revise the old poetic patterns, showing few new poetic nuances.","PeriodicalId":41864,"journal":{"name":"Romance Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"1 - 11"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02639904.2019.1599564","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59311090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}